The nonprofit just awarded us its 2012 Business Environmental Award for large-company environmental sustainability. This comes just a few months after Newsweek ranked us #10 on its list of America's Greenest Companies, up from 188th place in 2010 and 314th place in 2010.

The Business Environmental Award celebrates NVIDIA's approach to managing our environmental impact across three areas:

Through product design, we're working to improve power efficiency. Improving performance per watt is a guiding principle of our design process and a key consideration at each step of product development. Read more about our efforts toward power efficiency.

Through an intensive focus on our campuses, we've pledged to reduce energy and water use and waste. By using more efficient data centers, lights that shut off when not used and providing fully compostable recycled paper plates and corn-based compostable utensils, cups, lids and straws, we have significantly reduced our environmental footprint.

Through partnerships, we work with our suppliersand customers to improve their awareness of environmental issues and understand their expectations of our environmental performance.

The Acterra judges were especially impressed by our efforts to integrate environmental considerations across all aspects of our business ' from the way NVIDIA engages employees to build energy efficient products to NVIDIA's goal to reduce our environmental footprint on our campus and out in the community.

The Acterra Business Environmental Awards, initiated in 1990, are one of the Bay Area's oldest and most prestigious environmental recognition programs. NVIDIA will be honored at the 2012 Business Environmental Awards Reception on Thursday, May 31 in Palo Alto, Calif.

Acterra offers thousands of volunteer programs that help improve the environment ' ranging from habitat restoration to carbon reduction.